{"id":9423,"date":"2012-08-25T12:47:23","date_gmt":"2012-08-25T12:47:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/08\/25\/why-do-jews-do-so-well-and-arabs-so-poorly\/"},"modified":"2012-08-25T12:47:23","modified_gmt":"2012-08-25T12:47:23","slug":"why-do-jews-do-so-well-and-arabs-so-poorly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/08\/25\/why-do-jews-do-so-well-and-arabs-so-poorly\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Do Jews Do So Well and Arabs So Poorly?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don't think much of Richard Cohen as a commentator on the passing scene, but his A Difference Beyond Question<\/a> is right on target in his defense of Mitt Romney for pointing out the obvious:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

The cultural difference between Israel and its Arab neighbors is so striking that you would think it beyond question. But when Mitt Romney attributed the gap between Israel's economic performance and the Palestinians' — "Culture makes all the difference," he said in Israel — the roof came down on him. PC police the world over raised a red card, giving him demerits for having the temerity to notice the obvious. Predictably, Saeb Erekat, chief Palestinian negotiator and a member of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, denounced the statement as "racist." It was, of course, just the opposite.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But I want to take issue with the following sentence:  "I do know, though, that if you eliminate what would certainly be condemned as a racist explanation — Jews as inherently smarter than non-Jews — then you are left with culture . . . ."  What I object to is Cohen's apparent acquiescence in the false notion that a racial<\/em> explanation must be a racist<\/em> explanation.  I take no position on whether Jewish superiority is best explained racially or culturally.  I am objecting to the conflation of the racial<\/em> with the racist<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

There are two distinctions operative here and they ought not be conflated.  There is a distinction between the racial and the cultural, and a distinction between the racial and the racist.  The distinctions cut perpendicular to one another.  If some phenomenon has a racial explanation, as opposed to a cultural explantion, it doesn't follow that the explanation is racist or that the people advancing it are racist.<\/span><\/p>\n

Suppose that Jews as a group are smarter than non-Jews.  If that is true, then it is true. (And what I just wrote is a tautology, hence logically true: it doesn't get any better than that.)  Now if a statement is true, how can it be racist?  This is what I don't understand.  Truth is truth. Facts are facts.  There are racial<\/em> facts, facts about race, but no racist<\/em> facts.  If blacks are 12-14% of the U. S. population, then that is a racial fact.  But it is not a racist fact.  Nor is someone who states it, just in virtue of his stating it, a racist.  A person who states it may be, accidentally, a racist; but he is not, just in virtue of stating it, a racist.  Similaarly, there are facts about sex, but such facts are not sexist facts, and there are the sorts of facts that gerontologists study, but they are not ageist facts.<\/span><\/p>\n

There are racial explanations, explanations in terms of race, but a racial explanation is not a racist explanation.  Facts, propositions, explanations — these are not the sorts of item that could be racist or nonracist.  To think otherwise would appear to be a Rylean category mistake.  People<\/em> are racist or not.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don't think much of Richard Cohen as a commentator on the passing scene, but his A Difference Beyond Question is right on target in his defense of Mitt Romney for pointing out the obvious: The cultural difference between Israel and its Arab neighbors is so striking that you would think it beyond question. But … Continue reading “Why Do Jews Do So Well and Arabs So Poorly?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-race"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9423\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}